THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 30, 2017
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This outstanding revival o Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur's 1928 comedy has a surfeit o fantastic
actors, who give the production everything they've
got. Hildy Johnson (John Slattery) is a newspa-
perman who is trying to get out o the game, de-
spite pressure from his boss, Walter Burns (Nathan
Lane). Hildy is drawn back into journalism, against
his better judgment, when a beleaguered worker
named Earl Williams (John Magaro) escapes from
prison on the eve o his execution. The director, Jack
O'Brien, utilizes the best o what Broadway has to
o er: a big stage, a solid budget, slick production
values. The cast (including Sherie Rene Scott) is
sizeable, and it takes a director o O'Brien's skill to
keep all those hoops in the air without losing sight
o the story, or o the internal lives o the characters.
(Reviewed in our issue o 11/7/16.) (Broadhurst, 235
W. 44th St. 212-239-6200. Through Jan. 29.)
Jitney
The director Ruben Santiago-Hudson handles
the large cast o August Wilson's 1982 drama with
verve---an actor himself, he is sensitive to their
needs---while he keeps the story moving. The cen-
tral plot concerns Becker (John Douglas Thomp-
son), the earnest owner o a gypsy-cab business
in Pittsburgh. It's 1977, and the world is changing:
the block Becker's business is on may be razed in
the name o progress. Still, he and his drivers, all
played by actors o great skill and humor, want to
hold on to the past even as the past seeks to reject
them. Particularly excellent are Michael Potts, as
the emotionally tight isted Turnbo, and the rising
new star André Holland, who plays Youngblood.
Holland brings to mind late black actors like How-
ard Rollins and Paul Win ield---performers who
didn't play their race but added it to a character's
complexities. (Harvy Blanks, as the numbers run-
ner Shealy, adds lots o comic jolts.) There's a lit-
tle too much blues music to mark the transitions,
but that's a minor drag compared to the uniformly
good work o Manhattan Theatre Club's ensemble.
(Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.)
Made in China
This musical is almost certainly the irst puppet
show to open with a giant panda rapping a Don-
ald Trump supercut and conclude with a midco-
ital love duet. The loopy and cerebral company
Wakka Wakka uses small objects to think big: pre-
vious works have taken on the creation o the uni-
verse and the inancial collapse o Iceland. Here
the focus is on fraught Sino-American relations,
as exempli ied by Mary, a gloomy divorcée, and
Eddie, her lonely Chinese-immigrant neighbor.
After Mary receives a plea from an imprisoned
Chinese worker, a ravening toilet abducts her and
Eddie, landing them in Beijing. Unsurprisingly,
the critique o American consumerism and Chi-
nese labor practices pales in comparison to the
giddily surreal staging and kooky Bunraku-style
puppetry. But when imaginative force summons
humping dogs, stalking dragons, a high-kicking
Mao, and a singing toilet plunger, who can com-
plain? (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.)
Mope
Trevor (Eric T. Miller) is a, ahem, working sti
in the porn industry. A low-level performer---the
"mope" o the title---he's seething with resent-
ment. Women on set and o reject him, and his
roommate, the genial Shawn (RJ Brown), is climb-
ing the adult-entertainment ladder while Trevor
makes extra cash as a night-club doorman. Paul
Cameron Hardy's play is most interesting for its
tonal shifts, even i they're not always smooth.
The show often lirts with sitcom tropes, espe-
cially in the scenes with Alice (Jennifer Tsay), a
wide-eyed hedge-fund employee who discovers
the sex industry's odd subculture. (Porn karaoke---
it's a thing!) But the real subject here is the white
American lumpenproletariat's disa ection, as
Trevor, bored and angry, blames everybody but
himsel for his failures. We're likely to see more
plays about these men in the coming years. (En-
semble Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52nd St. 866-811-4111.)
The Present
The writer Andrew Upton has adapted one o
Chekhov's earliest pieces for the stage, known
as "Platonov"---he started it when he was eigh-
teen---and one wonders why, especially since Mi-
chael Frayn did such a masterful adaptation in
1984. Upton's version is set in the nineteen-nine-
ties, in post-Communist Russia, where, after de-
cades o repression, tempers lare easily, and even
the most boring conversation, apparently, leads
to sexy talk. All o this takes place at a birthday
celebration for Anna (Cate Blanchett, doing her
best), who's turning forty. When she was younger,
Anna was the unhappy trophy wife o a powerful
general. Now various elements o her life come
together at the general's summer dacha. He's just
one ghost in the spectacle, as is the love that the
schoolteacher Mikhail Platonov (Richard Rox-
burgh, crying every chance he gets) felt, and ap-
parently still feels, for Anna. It's sad to watch ac-
tors o this calibre try to swim in such a mess, and
they're not helped by the director, John Crowley,
who does nothing to parse the confusion, let alone
to spare Susan Prior, as Platonov's wife, from the
misogyny that hobbles her role. (Ethel Barrymore,
243 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.)
The Tempest
Given its themes o imprisonment and liberty,
this play makes an ideal conclusion to the di-
rector Phyllida Lloyd's acclaimed trilogy o all-
female Shakespeare shows set in a women's prison.
Harriet Walter conjures Prospero by way o a re-
spected old lifer named Hannah Wake. She and
her fellow-inmates seem to be imagining their
lives into Shakespeare's scenes (the storm that
opens the play is a cell-block riot, and shipwrecked
characters arrive as new inmates), sometimes los-
ing themselves in its fantasies, until harsh prison
horns abruptly end their play-acting. The most
painful interruption comes during Miranda and
Ferdinand's betrothal masque, which takes the
form o a dazzling consumerist reverie projected
onto giant white balloons, and which Prospero lit-
erally punctures, forcing the women back to the
hard reality o the cell block. (St. Ann's Warehouse,
45 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.)
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ALSO NOTABLE
The Beauty Queen of Leenane BAM Harvey
Theatre. (Reviewed in this issue.) • A Bronx Tale
Longacre. • Dear Evan Hansen Music Box. • Finian's
Rainbow Irish Repertory. Through Jan. 29. • The
Great American Drama A.R.T./New York
Theatres. • In Transit Circle in the Square. • Martin
Luther on Trial Pearl. Through Jan. 29. • Natasha,
Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 Imperial. • Orange
Julius Rattlestick. • The Oregon Trail McGinn/
Cazale. • The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart
The Heath at the McKittrick Hotel. • Tell Hector
I Miss Him Atlantic Stage 2. • Waitress Brooks
Atkinson.
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